Saturday, January 16, 2016

Last month, the Yankees lost two prospects in the annual MLB Rule 5 draft, an event that rivals the infield fly rule for its complexity. One of the players was Jake Cave, a promising CF who looked good last year in both Scranton and Wilkes Barre. When we lost Cave, the general pitter-patter across the Yankiverse went this way:

The Yankee farm is so flush with tomatoes that other teams are snapping up our leftover beefsteaks.

Fine. So be it. When we find other teams scuba diving in our dumpster, the Yankees must be doing something right.

So what do we make of two obscure, atomic-level transactions last week, which basically involve the outer rings of our 40-person roster?

Yesterday, we claimed OF Lane Adams off waivers from the KC Royals. He's 26, bats RH, and hit .281 last year between AA and AAA. He stole 31 bases. In simple terms, he looks destined for the Scranton coal yard.

I don't mean to belittle Adams, who may yet have a fine career. But at this point in time, he doesn't exactly look like a barn-burner. Also, he replaces Ronald Torreyes, an obscure OF we obtained three days earlier in a minor league deal that was most memorable for its lack of consequence.

A month after losing prospects, the Yankees are signing 26-year-old warm bodies. I doff my cap to Brian Cashman's relentlessness in combing the waiver wires - (the guy must have a phone ap that makes a bugle call whenever somebody is let go.) But there is no way the Yankee courtiers can spin these moves as hopeful signs. For all the talk about our revived farm system - revived when compared to our former system, not to other teams - we sure are hungry for table scraps. And that is not a good sign.